


a sea beyond reckoning

by survivorcurse



Series: that which creates Fate (a Middle-Earth AU) [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 魔道祖师 | Módào Zǔshī (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Lord of the Rings, Goodbyes, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Melancholy, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28946223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/survivorcurse/pseuds/survivorcurse
Summary: "Lan Wangji gave his immortality to a colorful, lively boy from the race of Men with ribbons red as roses in his hair, and they are wedded and staying in Middle Earth, and Lan Xichen --Lan Xichen fell in love with another half-elf like himself, a bright, sharp, clever wonder, a masterpiece of a boy, his beauty so great it ached like an open wound and his intelligence spanning entire ages of history, and they exchanged vows, and they adored each other, and --Lan Xichen has no one as they prepare the last boat to bear him away to the Undying Lands."The First Jade of Lan sails away to Valinor.
Relationships: Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén/Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Series: that which creates Fate (a Middle-Earth AU) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123079
Comments: 12
Kudos: 66





	a sea beyond reckoning

Lan Xichen gazes longingly at the Sea. 

Elves are a quiet race. Around him, there are no whispers or murmurs aside from the gentle humming of songs that were born millenia ago and the loving lull of the waves caressing the hulls of the boats. No one talks to him - he stands on the deck, one hand tucked on the small of his back, another keeping hold of his xiao. The sky is a delicate pale blue, like fine silk, like a knife could tear through it and leave the pieces fluttering in the wind. 

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji says, salutation, inquiry and affection all at once. His brother is the only person who still truly talks to him, the one who understands grief as it settles in the hearts of half-elves. The two of them are the only ones of their kind. When they were children, it felt as if there was no one else in the world aside from them. The Twin Jades of Lan have always been distant, and beautiful, and endlessly precious. And then both of them fell in love, and in this they are like their Elvish king of a father - Elves fall in love once, and for lifetimes. 

Lan Wangji gave his immortality to a colorful, lively boy from the race of Men with ribbons red as roses in his hair, and they are wedded and staying in Middle Earth, and Lan Xichen --

Lan Xichen fell in love with another half-elf like himself, a bright, sharp, clever wonder, a masterpiece of a boy, his beauty so great it ached like an open wound and his intelligence spanning entire ages of history, and they exchanged vows, and they adored each other, and --

Lan Xichen has no one as they prepare the last boat to bear him away to the Undying Lands. 

“Wangji,” he answers, shifting to look at his little brother. After thousands of years, it is strange to see him without the shimmering necklace around his neck. Lan Xichen wonders if Wei Ying has hold of it now. It drives something straining and twisted in his core - his own pendant is resting atop the fluttering rhythm of his heart, returned to him from small, delicate hands after being given away for what was meant to be the rest of his lifetime, slid over the length of a wooden desk between himself and the one man he ever loved aside from his brother. Over the gleaming jade of his immortality made jewel, there rests another: a smaller, shining piece of amber, golden with a glow of its own despite the passing of its owner, entwined with the delicate silver chain, two eternal lives touched together. Lan Xichen never had to hand his immortality away because his beloved was the same as himself; they exchanged vows and the promise of spending the eternity of this world together, and traded their necklaces as proof of the oath they’d sworn to each other - and when his heart died, he begged to die alongside him, and was denied, and pushed away. He is burdened with the weight of two Elvish lives, now, carrying them both into the waves of the Sea.

“Will you be fine?” he asks his brother, glances away from the bare skin of his collarbone and looks up into his golden phoenix eyes. 

One of them must. One of them has to be. 

Lan Wangji nods, once. He has always been so solemn, Lan Xichen notices with a slight smile. As a child, he was already thousands of years old. His husband, young and bright as the Earth itself, is catching flowers with their son by the shore, entwining petals in the boy’s hair as if he is but a small child again, and his voice carries like a joyful song through the seasalt air, laughter donning his words like jewels upon a crown. He is not a king of Men, a title he has forsaken for his younger brother’s stead, but he carries in himself all the glorious kingship that used to be so essential to his race. 

Lan Xichen is glad. He is glad for his brother, that he would get a family, that he would get a life, after two decades of loneliness and grief. If it perpasses through his own loss much more sharply, if it puts his own devastation in painfully clear detail, he keeps it to himself. He does not ask if Lan Wangji is certain he wants to stay. He is not asked if he was certain he wanted to die alongside A-Yao in the crumbling ruins of that temple, and, for that quiet, understanding grace, he is grateful. 

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji says, suddenly, voice with the sharp edge it takes whenever he speaks something he hasn’t quite expected from himself. Lan Xichen raises a delicate eyebrow and waits. 

“I’ll continue to tell Sizhui about you,” Lan Wangji continues. “I shall not - I will not let you be forgotten.”

Lan Xichen smiles. He does not say the age of the Elves is over. He does not say the purpose of sailing away to Valinor is to write an ending to a story that is thousands of years old. Men are stubborn, and they cling to what they, perhaps, should not, and his brother is a Man as much as he is an Elf. “Will you speak about him?” he asks gently, and there is no need to speak names. There is only one person it could ever be, when it makes Lan Xichen’s smile tremble like this, with this tinge of a sadness that comes with adoration. 

Lan Wangj’s lips press together. “I must,” he answers. “To speak of you is to speak of him.”

Lan Xichen wraps his long fingers around the two pendants hanging from the column of his neck. “Indeed,” he whispers. 

“One shall never tell a story only halfway,” they say at the same time, voices mingling with the familiar cadence of a principle they learned as children and have carried with themselves for millenia. How fitting, that they would fall for people who have always been on the missing halves of the stories, the ones that people dislike singing about. 

How fitting that they themselves will sing regardless. 

“You are a good man, Wangji,” Lan Xichen says, rests a hand atop his brother’s shoulder. One last touch, before he leaves. One last memory on these shores, before the Twin Jades are parted forever. The soft embroidery of his blue robes is gentle on his palm. “And I love you so.”

Lan Wangji does not glance away from him. “I love you also, xiongzhang.”

It is the first time he has spoken these words aloud in all their thousand-years lives. It is the first - and will be the last, and the only - time someone other than A-Yao has said them to him. 

Things have so much meaning when they are ending. 

“Go to your family, A-Zhan,” Lan Xichen says, kindly, indulging in this endearment he hasn’t proffered since they were children. “They require you more. We will all be fine.” 

Lan Wangji nods and, in a graceful flow of practiced motion, raises his arms in front of his body, touches his fingertips together, and bows to him one last time before tucking his hand on the small of his back and leaving to attend to his husband and his child. 

Wei Ying rises up on his knees, and then leaps to his feet. He wears black robes, and red ribbons, and he lovingly tucks himself against his spouse’s side, fidgets with the pale blue ribbon wrapped around his head with the delight that comes with doing something solely because he is the only person permitted to do so. The jade necklace dangles around his throat, shining bright. Lan Wangji winds an arm around his small waist, and places a hand on Sizhui’s shoulder. 

“Zewu-Jun!” Wei Ying calls out. He is always louder than he must be, and Lan Xichen has always found this a good thing - until his voice was the one to denounce A-Yao and create the paper-thin cracks in the illusions he maintained. And now he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. It matters not. The likings of a grieving man who is sailing away to Valinor matter little to those who stay. He turns anyway, because he can appreciate this kind boy who is so gentle with his brother, and he smiles and responds to the greeting with a raised hand. Wei Ying straightens his back, and bows, clumsy as someone who is not accustomed to performing the formality that comes with a reverence, and says, “Travel safe! We’ll miss you!” 

Somewhat close by, His Majesty Jiang Cheng bows as well. He is sterner, and stoic, and the set of his shoulders tells of power and pain. “May the tidings guide you well, Zewu-Jun,” he says. His tone carries, awe-inspiring and regal. He is so young, still, even with the crown of the Kingdom of Men atop his head. “You will forever be on our minds.” 

Next to him, prince Jin Ling’s reverence is much less pronounced, a token of respect more than anything else. “Farewell,” he exclaims, well-raised even if he’s not gentle, perhaps more accustomed than someone so young should be with people leaving forever. There is some wisdom in him, from a boy who has known death since his birth. The heir of the last lineage of the Elves and the Kingdom of Men has never been taught how to bend the knee or bow his head. A-Yao taught him much - Lan Xichen was there to see, watch Jin Ling stumble through his first steps, stutter through his first words - but he never taught him subservience. The fine, golden threads winded in his dark hair flutters in the sea breeze. Lan Xichen thinks he can see a thin scar around his throat. He thinks he can see blood trickling down his fair skin. If he closes his eyes, he can see Jin Ling cradled in A-Yao’s arms, kept safe in his embrace. 

Sizhui is weeping when Lan Xichen turns to look at him, clear, lovely tears running down his cheeks. He kneels down, and presses his forehead to the wooden planks that make up the haven, and he looks  _ devastated _ . Lan Xichen feels an urge to rush forward and take him in his arms as he did when he was a baby, shush him and thread his fingers through his hair and soothe him through his woes. He does not. Sizhui is growing older. He must understand the weight of endings, and the importance of farewells. No one tells him to cease his tears. Jin Ling doesn’t scoff as he is wont to do. 

They are all so young. Lan Xichen feels infinitely ancient in a way only memory can make an existence. 

He feels lonely - as lonely as the single figure far away from everyone else, standing almost too close to the lapping waves of the sea, as if musing over how a body would feel if it dropped to the water. 

Nie Huaisang looks at him from the harbor, fan cradled in his delicate hands, covering half of his pretty face. The dwarf prince, now made king with the passing of a brother much more deserving of the title than he could ever be, has always appeared too soft for his own good, hair fine and smooth, unable to ever grow a beard; but Lan Xichen saw his small fingers, that had never grasped a saber or a hammer or a blacksmith’s tools, tainted by A-Yao’s blood. He saw his eyes melded and carved to resentful steel. 

Lan Xichen is thousands of years old, and he has read almost all the books that were ever written in language and listened to all the stories that were ever spoken, yet he does not have a word for the look he exchanges with Nie Huaisang. 

There is a moment of silence as the anchor is lifted and the boat begins to sail in near-quiet - and then the fan is snapped close in a sharp, certain motion, and a long sleeve is brushed back, and Nie Huaisang lifts his fan in a discreet gesture that means things Lan Xichen understands but cannot describe. 

He lifts his xiao in turn. He is not taking Shuoye with him. It rests with Hensheng. There is no place for swords in Valinor. 

The boat sails away. He turns to gaze at the endless blue of the Sea, and touches his fingertips to A-Yao’s necklace. 


End file.
